Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.

For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

I had to steal to survive.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together.

Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.

Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

There's great disparity between who goes to college and who goes to jail. Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.

There's a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.

I am a journalist.

At the end of the day, we're defined by our predicament, not by the sides of town.

Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.

When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that's under economic assault and a poor community that's getting bigger, they're talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there's a 'Ferguson' near you.

So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.

Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.

George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.

Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

So here we are today with a new conversation. When University of Georgia plays Georgia Tech, it's uniform color versus skin color. We have - we've overcome that level of racial fear.

Humanitarian appeals always help. They penetrate deeper than political tradeoffs.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.

The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff.

People always grow and mature.

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.

A man who cannot be enticed by money or intimidated by the threat of jail or death has two of the strongest weapons that anyone has to offer.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.

The law protects you from being abused. It doesn't threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.

I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.

I mean, the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal, which is not true, but then it's put out in the media as true.

The more you focus on sex without love, and drugs and violence, lifestyle of intimidation and recycling, the less energy you spend on opening up the big tent.

Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president. Obama has that voice. It has to be used.

We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.

My very first recollection of life on earth was waking up in bed with my mother, and she was showing me a picture of my father, Charles Jackson, with a group of soldiers.

I remember being taught my place.

If the American people in a matter of months can love the people of Kuwait, whom they have not seen, they can love the people of our nation's capital just as well.

There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.

I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.

Those powers that control the tent are not threatened at all by any activity that you engage in, in the shadows, that's not moving toward the tent. And I am rather convinced that we have a generation that is so preoccupied with life in the shadows, they never even focus on getting to the sunlight where you open up the big tent.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

I had gained a greater appreciation of hearing the concerns of woman, doctors, and so many others.

If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain't no hospital going to lock him out.